


birds that were sleeping in your soul

by indigostohelit



Category: Narcos (TV), Narcos: Mexico (TV)
Genre: Dancing, Fantasy, Lovers To Enemies, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:02:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22795984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigostohelit/pseuds/indigostohelit
Summary: What Miguel has, he's hungry to hurt; and once he's hurt it badly enough, he's hungry to have it again. Amado grew up in the warm dry country by the rivers, where the grass grows thick and gold. In the autumn, there, the wildfires come; the smoke first, then the devastation, licking across brush and earth, eating towns and homes and human beings. It doesn’t satisfy itself, fire. It only starves.But oh!—the light!Before their last meeting, Miguel and Amado are given some time to themselves.
Relationships: Amado Carrillo Fuentes/Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo
Comments: 10
Kudos: 46





	birds that were sleeping in your soul

**Author's Note:**

> Set between S2 E9 and 10, and contains spoilers. For the goldfish?: thanks for being absolutely wrecked by this ship, can't wait to do this for the next year. Based on the fictional text of Narcos: Mexico, and not on any real persons living or dead. Warnings for discussion of period-typical homophobia and themes of unreality.
> 
> Title from Pablo Neruda, Poem 12: "For my heart, your chest is enough; for your liberty, my wings are enough. From my mouth will arrive in the heavens, that which was sleeping on your soul... I awoke, and they sometimes migrate and flee: birds that were sleeping in your soul."

It's full up with daylight, the runway, heat rustling on the ground like a field of sun. Inside it, Miguel’s image is too blurred to focus on: clear when Amado is nearly beside him, wavering to invisibility as he grows farther away.

Amado jogs to catch up. “Will you go back to Guadalajara?” he says, instead of what he wants to say, which is, _Don’t walk away from me. You owe me an answer. What next?_

“Not yet,” says Miguel. They’re crossing through the shadow of one of the great planes, flickering black across Amado’s vision. “Soon. I have business to take care of there.” He hesitates. “And—”

“The family,” says Amado. Miguel doesn't look at him, and Amado slows, letting him pass into the brightness ahead. The resentment is cool and familiar in his throat: the certainty of Miguel’s surprise, his underestimation. What; does Miguel expect him not to know? Of course María took him back; of course María lets him into her life, into the lives of her children. Amado could have told him she would years ago. It's a difficult thing, remembering all the reasons not to forgive Miguel. It's difficult, remembering there are reasons not to be in love with him. Personally, Amado's never managed it.

But then again, Amado knows what María's never realized: he doesn't have to. “But you aren’t going yet,” he says, to Miguel's back. “So how long?”

Now Miguel pauses for a long moment, in the shadow of another of the planes. Amado watches his image clarify at last with nearness, and comes to a halt at Miguel's shoulder.

“How long would you like?” Miguel says.

There's an office, high in one of the watchtowers. It's Amado's, technically, though he never uses it. What's the point? Anyone impressed by suits and carpets and telephones ought to be half in love with Miguel already, and Amado an afterthought to them. That's something he'll have to get used to, after Miguel is gone.

After Miguel is gone. That's been happening more and more lately: he blinks, and some vital and invisible thing is a different color, a different angle, Miguel's absence slashed over it as if with a knife. And then he blinks again, and the horizon is at rights, and Miguel is before him, settling down into the spindly chair on one side of the round wooden table, as real and living as if the future had never been.

He circles behind his own desk and finds tequila and two glasses. No ice, but it's not his worst sin to be a poor host. Miguel accepts the first glass, and raises it to him; Amado sits across from him, raises his in return.

“To seventy tons,” he says.

“And those who buy them,” says Miguel, raises his glass, and drains it. Amado can see his throat work. When he sets the glass down on the table and looks up, his eyes are bright.

“Will we celebrate?” he says.

Amado tries not to look startled. The last time Miguel celebrated anything, he's almost certain, he ended the night with a tiger in his house. “Celebrate how?” he says.

“However you like,” says Miguel. Something’s alive and working in his head: Amado can see it moving, a glitter in his eyes. “I told you, Amado: I couldn't have done this without you. Do you think money is the only thing I know how to repay?”

There is, though Amado thinks he may be the only one in the world who knows it, a basic difference between Miguel and himself. Miguel would say the differences were a multitude; Neto would have said they were uncountable. But Amado, who when he tilts his head just wrong these days is the heir to a thousand various futures—though not to all—knows one:

Miguel knows how to repay money, certainly. Miguel even knows, if Amado is being generous, how to repay disrespect, and disobedience, and disloyalty. Miguel knows how to pay debts of power; and in his understanding of that power is his great pride. And yet: what Acosta had said, over the body of his enemy, would have been a foreign language to him. To Miguel, debts of respect—debts of feeling—debts of a man's name—these are things which must translate into power, and out of it again, to be comprehensible.

Amado Carrillo Fuentes—Señor de los Cielos—Amado understands the weight of a name, without having to ask what that name can do for him. He understands not just what he owes in dollars, what he owes in deals, what he owes in favors and contracts and negotiations, but what is owed from honor. What he owes from his heart.

He understands perfectly. He just isn't going to pay.

“We could fly to Cancún,” he says. “Acapulco.”

“We could,” Miguel agrees, so readily that Amado knows immediately it was the wrong answer. Miguel in one of his generous moods, one of his endless and habitual hunts for reconciliation, is almost worse than Miguel when he's angry. _How long would you like?_ Does Miguel think Amado really believes the answer won't be used against him?

There's ten ways to ask this question. Flattery will do. “Tell me,” he says, “if you were me, what would you want? What would you ask to be given?”

Miguel is silent a moment. Then, below the table, firm and unmistakable, Amado feels it: the pressure of Miguel's knee against his.

It takes him a moment to respond. “We haven’t,” he says, “since—”

“I know,” says Miguel.

Amado knows he knows; but he says, anyway, heavy and metallic against his teeth: “Since you sent me to Juárez.”

“I know,” says Miguel, again, and waits. Amado can feel the solid warmth of him, resting, unmoving. Not an order; just a question, to be answered rightly or wrongly, as Amado likes.

So this is what he wants. Amado doesn’t know whether to be disappointed or not. He ought to be, probably. He’d understood that they wouldn’t continue it— _it_ , this natural and unnatural thing they had, older than the Federation and more vital than sinsemilla—after he went north from Guadalajara; but they’d never spoken about it. When he’d seen Miguel again, when Miguel had brought the army to stare down Benjamín Arellano Felix, he’d thought—but Miguel hadn’t touched him. He’d barely even spoken to him.

And now: the reconciliation. It's a part of Miguel, this not-quite-repentance, as much as the greed. What Miguel has, he's hungry to hurt; and once he's hurt it badly enough, he's hungry to have it again. Amado grew up in the warm dry country by the rivers, where the grass grows thick and gold. In the autumn, there, the wildfires come; the smoke first, then the devastation, licking across brush and earth, eating towns and homes and human beings. It doesn’t satisfy itself, fire. It only starves.

But oh!—the light!

Amado settles his hand over Miguel's, and runs his thumb over Miguel’s knuckles. His hand feels light in Amado’s, strangely delicate; his skin is dry, and warm. When he looks up, Miguel is smiling at him.

“Will you?” he says.

“Will I?” says Amado. He closes his eyes; he sits back in his chair. “Will I? I don’t know, Miguel. What should I say?”

“Will I celebrate with you?” he says. “Will I kiss you, and tell you I love you, and suck your cock, and stroke your hair? Will I give you that? I've already given you so much, Miguel; I’m going to have to start taking, soon enough. I don't know if there's anything in Mexico left for you to ask from me.”

“Sometimes I think I understand you,” he says, “and then I look at it, at this everything that you've tried to make, and I think anyone who wanted to see the inside of your head would need a hundred years. You wanted this so badly, Miguel, and why? What did it give you? You drove away your wife as soon as you had her, and then you drove away the next because at once you wanted the first back again; you bought hotels and palaces and you lived in them like they were shacks on the beach. I wouldn't have been surprised if you never unpacked your bags. You looked at me as if you were happy; you called me your partner; and then you walked away. I can't remember the last time I saw you laugh, Miguel. Is that what you were dreaming of?”

“When I take your empire from you,” he says, “I think it might be a relief.”

“You killed Pablo Acosta, and when you did I thought, one day, I’m going to kill you,” he says, “but I was wrong. I’m going to hurt you. I’m going to hurt you worse than anyone ever has. And I wish it was about you, Miguel, I really do, I wish it was revenge, I wish it was a debt of honor, I wish it was for my family. I wish I was angry at you. I’d like to do you that courtesy.”

“It’s been so hard,” he says, “being so far away from you. It’s been so—I dreamed I was in Guadalajara, standing outside that goddamn hotel, and asking you to fly away with me. I woke up and I wanted—I don’t know what. I wanted to be in my airplane sitting next to you, I wanted to hear you laugh. I wanted to hold you in my arms. I wanted your attention. I wanted to fall asleep with you beside me and wake up with you in the morning. I wanted to have never left your bed. I wanted to come home to you. I wanted you to see yourself through my eyes, I thought: if you could see yourself the way I see you, how could you not be satisfied. How could you still be dissatisfied?”

“Are you going to answer me?” says Miguel. He’s still smiling.

“Yes,” says Amado. “Yes. I will.”

Miguel stands, and pulls him into his arms.

It feels familiar, being there, kissing Miguel, one hand on the back of his head and the other on his shoulder. Of course it should; they did it a hundred times, before Amado went north. It's only that Amado hadn't expected it to, really, hadn't expected to remember what Miguel likes, what makes his breath hitch. This particular speed; this particular slowness. This gentle scrape of teeth. Through the high windows, the filtered sun is blooming on Amado's cheek, and Miguel's thumb is at his temple, moving cool and soft across the heat.

Amado moves forward, a little, to see if Miguel will let him. Miguel does, easily, steps back, lets Amado crowd him against the desk in the back of the room. The goddamn generosity. Amado settles his body against Miguel's and sets about kissing him thoroughly, pushing into him, against him. Miguel goes, spreads his legs so that Amado can fit himself between them; Amado digs his nails in a little, involuntary, and can hear Miguel's breath hiccup. He bites Miguel's lip, just to hear it again. He wants to hear it again. He wants to hear it tomorrow morning, and the morning after. He wants to hear it when he’s old.

He lets his hands come down, splayed on Miguel's shoulders, and tilts his head a little, and pulls back.

“Miguel,” he says, “if you'd let me celebrate with you—however I wanted?”

He sees how Miguel's face changes; the fear, though Miguel certainly doesn’t know Amado sees it. “What would you ask for?” he says, rough.

“If I could have anything I wanted from you,” says Amado, “I'd ask you to take me dancing.”

Miguel's eyes close.

“Amado,” he says.

“I know,” says Amado. He does know. There’s a bitterness thick in his chest; he’s bluntly glad to have it on his tongue, instead. One hour of his life during which Miguel fails; one desert he can’t make bloom. “I'm not asking.”

Miguel lets him go. He isn’t looking at Amado. Amado steps back, and tucks his hands into his pockets. “We'll celebrate,” he says, “before you go to Guadalajara. Maybe even afterwards. I don't need the whole world, Miguel. You know that. This is enough.”

“There's a tape player behind the desk,” says Miguel.

“What?” says Amado.

Miguel’s head is tilted, a little. Amado had thought he was only avoiding eye contact, but he’s looking at something,behind the desk. His face is strange.

“A tape player,” he says. “Did you put it there?”

“No,” says Amado blankly. “Is it—are you sure?” It’s a ridiculous question. How could he not be sure? He circles the desk, anyway, and kneels down by the square grey cassette player there. It pops open easily. “There’s nothing inside,” he tells Miguel.

“It’s not,” says Miguel, “it doesn’t record?”

“No,” says Amado; he’s quite sure of that. He’s equally sure he had nothing to do with putting it on the carpet here. “I’m the only one with keys to this office,” he says. “If there had been a break-in—I’d know.” And who would break in to throw away a cassette player? If it were some sort of wire—the federales, the American government—but this?

“Are there any tapes in this room?” says Miguel.

That Amado does know. “In the bottom desk drawer,” he says. “I keep some of mine here. Bolero, mostly, bachata. You can—” The keys are in his pocket; he presses them into Miguel’s palm, and watches as Miguel bends, opens the drawer, flicks through the little white cassettes, one by one. “I haven’t used this office for a long time,” he says, “but it wasn’t here last week. Last month? I don’t know who could have—”

“Maybe it was God,” says Miguel.

“What?” says Amado.

There’s an outlet in the wall. Miguel plugs the tape player in, and fits one of the cassettes, and shuts the tape player. “Go on,” he says to Amado. “There’s more room by the table.”

Amado doesn’t want to go. He just hasn’t broken himself, really, of the habit of obedience.

The tape player clicks, whirs. Amado goes still; he knows this song. It takes him a moment, but he can see it in his mind’s eye—his parents, dancing in the sitting room, cheek to cheek. 

It’s a joke, almost: he never wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps. How many couples have danced to this song? How many have heard it? How many people have done together what he and Miguel are about to do, in small and sunlit rooms, mirroring back and back through years and little lifetimes?

Miguel fits into his body too easily: his hand on Amado’s shoulder, Amado’s hand on his waist. He can smell Miguel’s cologne, warm and dusty. Miguel’s heat in his arms; Miguel’s breath at his ear. Miguel’s heartbeat, in one of their chests.

Amado doesn’t dance this way often. He stores the bolero in this room because there isn’t much cause for him to listen to it. He must have learned this dancing years ago, as a child, but he can hardly remember the learning; rhythm and movement, his heartbeat and his hips, seem more instinct than rote. It’s slow, the way they’re moving, and almost gentle. He prefers the fast dances; he always has. Maybe in another hour he’ll want to remember why.

The music swells, settles. Miguel spins outward, away from him, and settles back into his arms. Amado curves himself around them, fitting their hips together. Miguel is watching his eyes, his lips; his body is all unconscious motion, a thing molded to Amado, for Amado to hold. _Maybe it was God_ , he’d said. Amado hardly knows God, except as a way to mark down the calendar days, to make yesterdays and tomorrows into something legible. Here in this room, his hand sliding along Miguel’s shoulder, tomorrow seems as invisible as the heat.

Miguel’s hair has come loose, a little, a strand falling into his eyes. Amado wants to brush it back; but one of his hands is curving around the small of Miguel’s back, and the other is tangled with Miguel’s own. He guides Miguel out, back into his own body, and watches Miguel’s half-lidded dark eyes, how his gleaming shoes move on the dull brown carpet. He doesn’t think Miguel has danced with no one watching him in years.

The song softens, hesitates, whispers into silence; the tape player clicks and hisses. Miguel’s body stills against his. “I’ll put on another,” he says, but he doesn’t move.

Amado knows what he wants. He’s used to knowing what Miguel wants. He curves his hand across the back of Miguel’s neck and kisses him again. Miguel leans up, opens for Amado, soft and hungry underneath him. When Amado pushes him forward, now, Miguel settles back into the chair; and Amado kneels at his feet, and bends his head between Miguel’s legs.

And what if they had gone dancing? He and Miguel, together, in some club or hall in Ciudad Juárez? The answer is easy, and it’s even written in Miguel’s language: power, and control, and waiting at the end of it, the tall and patient crow-dressed man called death. Not for the two of them, maybe, and not right away; but for someone, someday, soon enough. Any other answer would be incomprehensible to Miguel. It’ll be incomprehensible to Amado, too, before long.

Then again, maybe not.

Miguel believes—or believes that he believes—that there’s a place where he and Amado will be happy. A future, maybe; or not even a future, but some summer country, a city made golden, a Guadalajara running with milk and honey, and Miguel its king and sovereign. And Amado at his side, to be dispatched or summoned in as Miguel likes, and touched and let go, to be all that Miguel asks him to be, and be burnt up in the fire of Miguel’s need, and to still be whole and breathing in the morning. Miguel believes in that place. Cynic that he is, bloody-handed, bloody-minded, what lives in his soul—and Amado knows that soul, has slept atop it and inside it long enough—is faith, blazing and clear. Just faith. Fierce, and mountain-moving, and blind.

But Amado’s the lord of the heavens, and he knows his own land. For him and Miguel there is no celestial city. If they had all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, they wouldn’t do anything differently.

Miguel’s body jolts. Amado swallows it down. When he stands Miguel pulls him down into his lap, Amado sprawling a little awkwardly over his legs, and presses their mouths together, and Amado closes his eyes and lets everything go except for what’s inside his own skin. Miguel’s hand is rough and dry on his cock, and then slicker; and his other hand goes to Amado’s cheek, and Amado lets him deepen the kiss, Miguel’s teeth tugging at his lower lip. It feels so good, to have Miguel touching him. It’s always going to feel this good. He sighs, and comes over Miguel’s hand.

It takes them some time to detach from one another. When they do, they don’t speak, tucking themselves in, doing up the buttons of their shirts. Amado hesitates, as Miguel is fixing the cuffs of his sleeves; and then he tucks the loose strand of Miguel’s hair up, and runs his thumb briefly over it, and lets it go.

They go down the stairs. “You’ll call me,” says Miguel, “when I’m in Guadalajara. Tell me when the shipment is in Sylmar.”

“Of course,” says Amado.

“We’ll have a meeting, the plaza bosses,” says Miguel. “You’ll be there?”

It isn’t a question. “Of course,” says Amado, again. “I’ll see you there.”

He watches Miguel walk across the airfield: clear, at first, and then softer, the heat rising around him. He's one man, then two, then a dozen, glimmering and unreal. Amado watches them move, that thin line of threadbare ghosts. By the time Miguel reaches the airplane there's nothing left of him but brightness.


End file.
